Malaysian officials deny that missing Boeing 777 jet transmitted engine data
four hours after it lost radio contact

Officials investigating the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 said there was no evidence the jet had flown for hours after losing contact with air traffic control.

Earlier, unnamed United States investigators told the Wall Street Journal that they believed the Boeing 777 flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically transmitted by its twin Rolls-Royce Trent engines.

If true, that would widen the search zone for the missing plane by more than 2,000 nautical miles, an area stretching from India to Australia.

"Those reports are inaccurate," said Hishammuddin Hussein, the Malaysian Transport minister. "The last transmission from the aircraft was at 1.07am which indicated that everything was normal."

Shortly afterwards at 1.30am, the Beijing-bound flight and its 239 people on board vanished as it passed between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control.

However, an unidentified blip showed up Malaysian military radar at 2.40am on the other side of the country, above the Malacca Strait. The search, which has focused on both areas, remains fruitless, six days after the jet's disappearance.

A spokesman for Rolls-Royce said the company could not comment on the flight, since under International Civil Aviation Organisation rules it can only turn over the data to investigators. "We are helping the authorities and giving them all the support we can," he said.

Rolls-Royce monitors jet engines around the world through an automatic system called Engine Health Management.

This sends the temperature, pressure and other technical details of the engines while in flight back to its headquarters in Derby. The information is not a continuous stream, but transmitted by the plane in packets when it connects over a satellite or radio transmitter.

In the case of Flight MH370, the Malaysian authorities said they had checked with Rolls-Royce and that there was no data sent after the plane lost contact.

Another apparent clue to the mystery also turned out to be a false lead yesterday after Chinese satellite photographs from last Sunday, released by the state media on Wednesday night, were debunked.

The Chinese ambassador to Malaysia said the photographs, which claimed to show large pieces of debris roughly 200 miles from where the plane last made contact, should not have been released and were "a mistake". Earlier Malaysia and Vietnam scrambled aircraft to look once again at the area shown in the photographs, but could find no sign of any debris.

"We have spared no expense and no effort," said Mr Hishamuddun. "There is no real precedent for a situation like this. The plane has vanished".

In Beijing, relatives and friends of the missing passengers spent another angry day cooped up in a hotel in the city centre, demanding, but not receiving, any answers.

Several relatives have now threatened to sue Malaysia Airlines for not carrying out an efficient search, and a lawyer named Wang Guanhua from the Ribbeck law firm in Beijing materialised to offer them legal advice.

However, Mr Wang said it was a long road to any potential court action. "Since the location of the plane has not been found, there is a long way to go before any cases. If it turns out to be a terrorist attack, then of course that will not be a legal case. If it is a civil accident, the Montreal convention states that there should be compensation of at least $200,000 (£120,000) per person. If the fault lies with Boeing, then the case can be held in the United States," he said.